In his weekly column which appears in Irish newspapers today, Kevin Myers extensively criticises the current ads and programme
He writes: Surely the most pitiful lifebelt that the Irish Catholic Church is now reaching for is the Trocaire notion that its primary duties lie in providing a sort of human rights movement for the poor in Central America.
That, certainly, is the thrust of Trocaire’s Lenten television advertising campaign. This includes a winsome little girl called Digna, with rather startlingly shampooed hair, who tells us (via subtitles) that armed police came into her home and scared her.
Another ad says lugubriously that gang warfare in Honduras is rampant. What? Gang warfare, rampant? How shocking.
Yet another ad concludes with a shot of a dancing little girl who, the voiceover warns, when she grows up, will have to sell the only thing she owns…and as the camera gazes on her little body, the voice goes deeper as it intones, ‘night, after night, after night’.
This is nauseating stuff: cheap, grisly and exploitative. How would we like it if the Honduran Catholic Church made such TV ads about us? Not much, I suspect.
So is Trocaire simply offering another form of cultural imperialism, in which the Great White Man once again dispenses wisdom and cash to the less fortunate, duskier breeds?
Yet there’s another aspect to all this: for it’s as if Trocaire has found in Honduras an ideal pseudo-Irish historical theme park, complete with land issues rather like those of late 19th century Ireland.
They can thus endlessly and satisfyingly re-enact the dramas of Irish history, as they become a virtual Land League, gallantly opposing the cruel absentee landlords of Central America.